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Do college educated persons look down on those that are less-educated?
Not the unemployed ones still living with their parents.
Good point, in a way.
I've already been at a parents house for about 4 months already.
Got a little burnt out at one of the trucking jobs I was doing and went back into security for a bit.
However, even with rent offered and turned down, my stepdad's been coaxing me to get back into that profession.
Primarily after seeing many lay-offs of younger, less-experienced teachers that he works with.
His common philosophy:
"Work is work, no matter how much bull---t you got to put up with."
Not at all. I chose the (overly) collegiate route because I didn't like rolling the dice. By that, I mean that someone without college could wind up driving a subway car (good job) or working in retail (not so much).
I think some people with really slick degrees can be really uppity. They've lost touch with the "little people." I've often traveled in other countries and have befriended the most down-to-earth people in places like Italy, Portugal and South America. I don't believe they were college educated, but a friendship nevertheless developed. I'm sure they thought I was probably intelligent and educated, but in a t-shirt, shorts, tennis shoes and a knapsack, one isn't going to be off-putting to most people.
Do the college educated look down on those who are not?
Only the stupid college graduates who, at base, have no people skills. They may be temporarily successful for a short time but they eventually flame-out.
Only the stupid college graduates who, at base, have no people skills. They may be temporarily successful for a short time but they eventually flame-out.
I was often told that college would've helped persons with those types of short-comings grow out of that.
But, with many other things today, individual results will always vary.
Perhaps these individuals were already sour-hearts to begin with.
But the addition of a college education might've boosted their ego in a bad way and also gave them a larger list of targets to throw shame upon.
It's kind of ironic based on the title of the thread how many people have come out to throw insults at college grads.
I think this claim narrows down the debate a bit. Successful and hard working people will likely look down a bit on those who are no successful and are lazy. It's the whole I don't want my tax dollars supporting you line.
I live in an area of very over-educated people, mostly from very highly rated schools. I have come to believe that college is how the middle class runs away from home and gets someone to pay for it, at least quite often.
Certainly some people have a hair across their butts when it comes to education (or job status or anything status). It's a character flaw and personality behavior that I find abhorrent. True "class" means making people comfortable in your presence and that is the essence of real charm. Judging or looking down or whatever is quite the opposite. People who do that are not worth the dirt they walk on.
I live in an area of very over-educated people, mostly from very highly rated schools. I have come to believe that college is how the middle class runs away from home and gets someone to pay for it, at least quite often.
Certainly some people have a hair across their butts when it comes to education (or job status or anything status). It's a character flaw and personality behavior that I find abhorrent. True "class" means making people comfortable in your presence and that is the essence of real charm. Judging or looking down or whatever is quite the opposite. People who do that are not worth the dirt they walk on.
I love it. You're so salt-of-the-earth. When I finished grad school, the parents of an Italian-American friend from suburban Philadelphia came for the ceremonies (mine did not, due to the distance). They invited me along to a seafood restaurant. They were affluent, of the nouveau variety, and quite taken with themselves. I got a piece of fish that was tough, and I was struggling with it. The mother basically told me those who are confident in their wealth send bad food back. She summoned the wait staff. I might have since done that a time or two, but instead choose not to patronize the restaurant again. But this is analogous: classism at work.
I have no doubt the phenomenon of college graduates looking down on non-graduates exists. Heck, there are college graduates who look down upon other college graduates for not attending the "right" school. I personally don't look down on persons with no formal education because I know people who have gone to college but are ignorant on many basic subjects. Going to college means a person has schooling, but it doesn't mean that they are educated, however.
I had a boyfriend in a failed oil town in northwest Pennsylvania. His parents (converted from Catholic to Episcopalian, likely for status reasons) fancied themselves the gentry of this burg. I went to visit over a college week off. The college was a state u, and many kids were from steel/coal towns, first to go, etc. G had such poor table manners and I knew where he was from, that I figured he was one of those "first of his family" guys.
Well. Mom was already quite unhappy that G was seeing someone who was half-Jewish whose mother was a waitress and father a truck driver.
There was a big holiday dinner. There was some kind of food I didn't recognize, and I said, "I'm not familiar with this, how is it eaten?" Of course Mom gritted her teeth as she said they were stuffed chestnuts.
When it was time a few days later for another big dinner (I don't mean some estate-type dinner, just that there was a tablecloth, centerpiece and a dozen people I didn't know) I spiked a 102 fever. Measurable with a thermometer, I was fevered and weak and stayed in bed. It lasted for four hours and the fever went away. I guess I didn't want to eat dinner with them.
I am reminded of the scene in "The Bell Jar" where Sylvia Plath goes to meet the Wellesley old money lady who gave her a scholarship. She thought she was served some sort of "clear after-dinner soup, with a few petals in it." She drank it, and her benefactor did the same. Later she discovered it was a finger bowl. Now that lady had class.
A friend of mine, a (former) kneejerk upper-middle snob who had always been around private school people and so on married her first husband, a brilliant man, a Southern gentleman who had gone to a state school in the South for financial reasons. She said she was bothered at first by the fact that he went to that school, but got over it. (thanks...) Fast forward 16 years, the marriage ends fairly amiably and she's looking for company on Match.com, really hitting it up. Besides smart, funny, etc., she said that all possible suitors must be over 6'2" and over 200 pounds (she is tall and sturdy and tired of feeling "horsey.") Well, she's now very happily married to a very tall, sturdy... postman. A mail carrier who barely had one year of college when he dropped out to support his mother. He is the nicest, kindest man I've ever met, and certainly no dummy! She is now a great proponent of the USPS, he's a union steward, and she got him to switch from Republican to Democrat based on union issues.
She did learn to shoot guns, but that's fun...
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Do the college educated look down on those who are not?
